A Super Bowl ad for Ring security cameras boasting how the company can scan neighborhoods for missing dogs has prompted some customers to remove or even destroy their cameras.
Online, videos of people removing or destroying their Ring cameras have gone viral. One video posted by Seattle-based artist Maggie Butler shows her pulling off her porch-facing camera and flipping it the middle finger.
Butler explained that she originally bought the camera to protect against package thefts, but decided the pet-tracking system raised too many concerns about government access to data.
“They aren’t just tracking lost dogs, they’re tracking you and your neighbors,” Butler said in the video that has more than 3.2 million views.
I chose Reolink. AFAICT it’s not leaking anything outside my network and it’s fairly inexpensive. Not as cheap as the subsidized Ring brand but hey, at least I own them.
I’ve got a few Reolinks. I have them set to record to a local SD card and have blocked outside internet so that they’re not phoning home.
I have a reolink that I use as a baby monitor. It’s on our wifi but I set up my router to prevent it from accessing the internet. So you can only access it if you’re phone is on the wifi. And it records onto an SD card.
I’ve been worried about security, and therefore haven’t even researched the options. I’d like to have one, but I don’t want people able to see what’s happening without me allowing it for specific footage. Only guaranteed way was to just not have any. I could do local only, but there is less utility with that. So, it wasn’t worth the effort and cost.
I have my reolink cameras setup on an internal network without direct internet access, but have a server running Frigate and a VPN that I can remote into from my phone. Gives me full control of where the recordings are backed up and remote access controls. This setup works for their doorbells too which is neat.
PoE, no wifi for me. The DVR is in the rack, I keep meaning to back it up to a cloud account of some sort but haven’t gotten around to it so if you break into my house and steal the NVR I won’t have a record of you being there.
I have my security alerts sent to Telegram from Frigate just so it’s in another location for that reason.
I have a QNAP. Free dvr software. I buy cheap rtsp-capable cameras and roll my own.